Video: Contact Center; From Cost Center to Profit Center

On 8/10/2019, Riccardo Osti gave a speech on Customer Contact Week in Amsterdam about the use of customer feedback and the need for modern companies to turn customer-centric. In this video, you get a taste of what transpired on the event and the theme surrounding Riccardo’s speech. So what does it take to become customer-centric and activate the full potential of the contact centers? Three things:

Think of a car manufacturer in the old days, like Ford, when it launched the iconic Model T. It was the first ‘mass-production’ car ever, it came only in one color (black) and…that was it. The more cars sold, the lower the (fixed) production costs.

Usually, Product-Centric companies have their competitive advantage stored in product expertise. Remember this. It shouldn’t be surprising – in fact, the more we become ‘experts’ of technology, the more we irrationally feel that we don’t need to listen to customers.

Generally, Customer-Centric companies try to align development and delivery around the current and future needs of a set of customers. This sentence is very important, as it introduces three new concepts that are not present in a strict Product-Centric culture:

Future

Segmentation

Personalization

In fact, Customer-Centric companies try to maximize shareholders’ value by distinguishing highly profitable clients from less profitable ones, introducing the concept of lifetime financial value. Hence, Customer-Centric brands do not only care about today’s revenue but invest to cultivate clients that may spend more in the future. As a consequence, Customer-Centric firms’ competitive advantage is in the relationship experts, and no longer in the product.

Sounds good, but how do Customer-Centrics execute their plan? Mostly by focusing on these three tactics:

Customer development: make existing clients more valuable

Customer retention: cultivate clients so they don’t leave for another brand

Customer acquisition: focus on behaviours, not on demographics

So why is it so important that executives know and understand the product and consumer-centric concepts? Because moving from Product-Centric to Customer-Centric requires a cultural change from the above. Changes may impact design, structure, processes, metrics, and even incentives. The focus needs to move from ‘sell now’ to bigger, and more long-term goals.

What if you realise that your company is a Product-Centric company? First of all there is no good or bad here. There are many successful product-centric companies out there, but it is also true that in highly competitive markets most brands are now becoming Customer-Centric.

What if you aren’t an executive? Well, you can start your Customer-Centric transformation without having the support of the top management (yet). Try to experiment with this routine:

Ask your clients/contacts/colleagues for feedback after an important interaction

Write it down, segmenting by different customer persona

Collect them during the week, and ask at least another colleague to do so

Organize a 20-minute meeting with your team to share the feedback, discuss learning, and think about improvements

Implement the changes into your day-to-day while you keep track of new feedback

If results are encouraging, share them with the management

Advertise the changes to your customers, as they would be delighted that you heard their voice.